Personal blog - and temporary home page until new website is finished - of writer, editor and graphic artist Christopher Mills

Thursday, July 05, 2012

A Salute To The Original Patriotic Super-Hero!

After posting all of those patriotic super-hero comic covers here yesterday for the 4th of July, I remembered that, a few years ago, Archie Comics published a trade paperback collection of the earliest Golden Age adventures of their star-spangled sentinel, The Shield, from Pep Comics. Created by writer Harry Shorten and artist Irv Novick, The Shield predated Joe Simon & Jack Kirby's Captain America, making him the first "patriotic" costumed hero in funny books.

When the book came out, I made note of it, because the cover art was by my friends Mark & Stephanie Heike, but for wahtrever reasons, I didn't pick it up. (Most likely, those reasons were price and/or the fact that I was nowhere near a comic shop when it came out).

I've done some prowling around online, and it looks like I could probably snag a copy pretty cheaply, and I'd like to, but as I've never actually seen a copy, I'm wondering how the actual reproduction of the original comics looks. I don't know if the pages were scanned from old comics, or reproduced from original line-art with new coloring. With money as tight as it is these days - and thus, my comics buying more limited - I'd really like to know how it looks before I order it. If any of you out there have the book, maybe you could post a note in the comments and advise me. I'd appreciate it.

1 comment:

It's nothing special with the original art with the basic low-budget 4 color pastel colors. The intro isn't too exciting and the stories are your classic mediocre Golden Age fare. The only extras are the covers reprinted, a single ad page of the Shield's fan club ad and then another of him telling his fans hes off to fight crime and that he will be replace by his pal Archie. No Nazis per se but a made up nation of fascists. One interesting story is that it takes place at Pearl Harbor way before the Jap attack. It has some interesting insight of life at the time and with some great fuzzy science that will give ya a chuckle. Lots of cameos of J E Hoover too. The thing took me about 15min to read so its a quick read. Anyway, I wouldn't pay full price but if you can get in on the cheap ($5 or less) I'd grab it.

Welcome to Atomic Pulp

Christopher Mills is a professional writer of comic books and short fiction in a variety of genres, as well as a DVD reviewer for several pop culture websites. His taste in entertainment clearly peaked when he was about 15, which certainly explains his embarrassing obsession with James Bond, hardboiled crime fiction, comic books, paperback pulps, space opera, Universal/Hammer/Toho Monsters, sword & sorcery sagas, old genre TV shows and vintage B-movies.